Housing and Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-14
============================================================

James Browne (FF), Wexford

Unfortunately, I cannot accept the amendment. The amendment proposes a provision that a social housing appeal shall be made to an independent appeals officer located within the Housing Agency. This would be inefficient and administratively unworkable because 31 separate local authorities would be submitting appeals to a single office, which would be operationally impractical at scale, given the volume of social housing appeals dealt with across all local authorities. This is in addition to the financial cost of its establishment, which has not been costed.
The appeal provisions contained in section 20B have been developed following legal advice, consultation and engagement with local authorities. This consideration included a wide range of issues, including a detailed examination of existing legislation in the areas of qualification, decision and appeals, as well as the current local authority operational system. Legal advice in this context pointed to the necessity for an independent and impartial appeal as a more legally robust arrangement than providing, for example, for a procedural review only. The appeals function within each statutory housing authority will provide an independent, accessible and fair appeals service in a prompt manner without the necessity to establish a new entity or body, with the associated governance and related complexities.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:15+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-14